CEASE

CEASE

About the book

The poems in Beth Bachmann’s CEASE–not quite lyric, not quite prose–read more like urgently wired messages. Sometimes, her words splash forward like water from a pitcher. Sometimes, they erupt like fire from a drum. Beth Bachmann has written a scarily original, apocalyptic book about a time when it appears it is necessary to destroy and kill for peace. – Henri Cole

How are we to speak to each other in a time of war? In half-whispers? shouts? In their music–and even more so in their silences–these poems incredible power is in the knowledge they possess: the keen awareness that here, in America “we are guilty of what we haven’t done.” Bachmann has created here a necessary, inimitable, urgent music. – Ilya Kaminsky

“First comes peace then comes after…” It’s a sober utterance that hurls us into this monumental new collection, the pearl of calm on the storm’s tongue. The effect is astonishing. Bachmann manages to strike a perfect balance between crystalline clarity and centripetal verve, building poems that wild inside walls made of water, water made of motion, motion made of air. Bachmann has given us new territory, this major new event. – Kaveh Akbar

Beth

Currently at work on a book of poems about peace called Cease, Beth Bachmannteaches in the MFA program at Vanderbilt University.